Nick Turse | America's Commandos Deployed to 141 Countries: And 'Criminal Misconduct' Followed

20 March 20

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Nick Turse | America's Commandos Deployed to 141 Countries: And 'Criminal Misconduct' Followed

Nick Turse, TomDispatch
Turse writes: "Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States has leaned ever more heavily on its most elite troops. While U.S. Special Operations forces (USSOF or SOF) make up just 3% of American military personnel, they have absorbed more than 40% of the casualties of these years, mainly in America's conflicts across the Greater Middle East and parts of Africa."
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Young women wear face masks as protection against the coronavirus during Chinese New Year celebrations in London on January 26, 2020. (photo: Barry Lewis/Getty)

America's Coronavirus 'Curve' May Be at Its Most Dangerous Point
Kim Hjelmgaard and Jim Sergent, USA TODAY
Excerpt: "Soon, the United States will find out whether it's likely to be the next South Korea or Italy or even China when it comes to the acceleration of coronavirus cases and deaths."
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Prof. Juan Cole. (photo: University of Michigan)

Juan Cole | Not Giving Up on Happiness: Care of the Self and Well-Being in a Plague Year
Juan Cole, Informed Comment
Cole writes: "The specter of plague haunts our world, and it brings with it not only the ghouls of disease and death but vast economic and social uncertainty of a sort only the most elderly among us remembers (the Great Depression and World War II)."

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Sen. Richard Burr, R-NC. (photo: Mark Wilson/Getty)

GOP Senator Kept Coronavirus Info Secret for Weeks, but Shared It With Wealthy Donors
Tim Mak, NPR
Mak writes: "The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee warned a small group of well-connected constituents three weeks ago to prepare for dire economic and societal effects of the coronavirus."

EXCERPT:

One public health expert told NPR that early warnings about a coming health crisis and its effects could have made a difference just a few weeks ago.

"In the interest of public health, we actually need to involve the public. It's right there in the name. And being transparent, being as clear as possible is very important," said Jason Silverstein, who lectures at the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

"The type of language that could have come out there at the end of February saying here's what we ought to expect could have, you know, not panicked people, but gotten them all together to have to all prepare," Silverstein added.

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A group of young women walk past New Orleans police officers on Bourbon Street. (photo: Max Becherer/AP)

Younger Adults Are Large Percentage of Coronavirus Hospitalizations in United States, According to New CDC Data
Ariana Eunjung Cha, The Washington Post
Cha writes: "The deadly coronavirus has been met with a bit of a shrug among some in the under-50 set in the United States. Even as public health officials repeatedly urged social distancing, the young and hip spilled out of bars on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. They gleefully hopped on flights, tweeting about the rock-bottom airfares. And they gathered in packs on beaches."
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Funeral workers transport the coffin of a coronavirus victim into a cemetery in Bergamo. (photo: Flavio Lo Scalzo/Reuters)

'A Generation Has Died': Italian Province Struggles to Bury Its Coronavirus Dead
Angela Giuffrida and Lorenzo Tondo, Guardian UK
Excerpt: "Coffins awaiting burial are lining up in churches and the corpses of those who died at home are being kept in sealed-off rooms for days as funeral services struggle to cope in Bergamo, the Italian province hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic."
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The beauty that is Bears Ears National Monument in Utah. (photo: Getty)

New Study Disproves the Republican Lie That National Monuments Hurt Local Economies
Yessenia Funes, Gizmodo
Funes writes: "Donald Trump stripped Bears Ears National Monument and the Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah of their federal designations during his first year in office. State legislators applauded this move, fearing that the protections that come with this designation would hurt local economic benefits from mining, logging, and ranching. A new study, however, paints a different picture."

A new study, however, paints a different picture. Published in Science Advances on Wednesday, the study finds that national monument designations don’t actually change much in the local economy—except when they grow businesses in communities closest to these federal sites. Reducing the size of these two national treasures—Bears Ears and Grand Staircase—may have actually caused the loss of some 700 jobs in nearby communities. 

The study zooms into national monuments in eight western states: Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming. The data covers economic changes in the surrounding 15 miles of a monument from 1990 to 2015, which includes the designation of 14 monuments such as Grand Staircase-Escalante and the Sonoran Desert in Arizona.

Per the study, business establishments do better, on average, after a monument becomes official. This is especially true in hotel and lodging services, with a 16 percent average jobs increase, and construction, with a 17 percent increase, the study found. Business services; health services; and finance, insurance, and real estate services also saw notable increases. Industries such as mining and forestry saw no change, which goes against much of the rhetoric local Republican lawmakers in Utah put forth in opposing Bears Ears. 

Private interest was ultimately behind opposition to these national protections, and these interests come from the mining and fossil fuels sectors. Emails the New York Times obtained show that the Trump administration was focused on protecting oil and gas exploration in its decision to shrink Bears Ears. Consequently, the lands are now open to those looking to extract gold, uranium, silver, and copper.

This is despite the fact that this national monument is home to priceless indigenous artifacts and prehistoric fossils. Native American tribes were at the forefront of the efforts to designate this land under former President Barack Obama. With Trump in the White House, all their efforts went out the window. Now, their cultural and sacred sites remain threatened by the fools who decide to drive through these canyons on their ATVs, as well as the fossil fuel and mining companies that want to strip the lands of their natural resources.

That’s what makes this new study so important: It shows that the reasoning behind removing these protections was unfounded. It refutes the lie that these national monuments hurt local economies. 

“I hope these findings somewhat lay to rest the concern that monuments are going to have a negative effect and let us focus instead on other issues,” study author Margaret Walls, a senior fellow at environmental nonprofit research group Resources for the Future, told Earther.

The jobs data comes from the National Establishment Time Series, a private database that offers data on every establishment that employs people in the U.S. Through this resource, the team of researchers were able to see physical addresses, an estimate of sales, employment data, and what industry the establishment falls under. These data points help set this study apart from earlier research looking at the economic impacts of national monument designation.

The team also compared the impacts to local economies to the changes happening in communities a little farther away. These other communities served as a control group of sorts. It helped the researchers get a sense of any larger influences that may be unrelated to the national monuments themselves. Even after controlling for this, their findings were clear: National monuments are not bad, man. They’re good, even. 

We already knew this, of course. The Grand Staircase-Escalante is home to bee species only recently discovered. These national monuments preserve wildlife habitat and key ecosystems that help pull carbon dioxide out of our atmosphere. The economic benefits are but one element to how necessary these protections are—especially when humans are seemingly destroying what little untouched bits of nature we have left.

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Younger adults are large percentage of coronavirus hospitalizations in United States, according to new CDC data

Cape Cod Women for Change

Stark new data from the U.S. and Europe suggests people younger than 50 have a higher risk from coronavirus complications than many realize.

About this website

washingtonpost.com

Younger adults are large percentage of coronavirus hospitalizations in United States, according to new CDC…

Stark new data from the U.S. and Eur

By

Ariana Eunjung Cha 

March 19, 2020

The deadly coronavirus has been met with a bit of a shrug among some in the under-50 set in the United States. Even as public health officials repeatedly urged social distancing, the young and hip spilled out of bars on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. They gleefully hopped on flights, tweeting about the rock-bottom airfares. And they gathered in packs on beaches.

Their attitudes were based in part on early data from China, which suggested covid-19 might seriously sicken or kill the elderly — but spare the young.

Stark new data from the United States and Europe suggests otherwise.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis of U.S. cases from Feb. 12 to March 16 released Wednesday shows 38 percent of those sick enough to be hospitalized were younger than 55.

Earlier this week, French health ministry official Jérome Salomon said half of the 300 to 400 coronavirus patients treated in intensive care units in Paris were younger than 65, and, according to numbers presented at a seminar of intensive care specialists, half the ICU patients in the Netherlands were younger than 50.

At a White House news conference on Wednesday, Deborah Birx, the response coordinator of the nation’s coronavirus task force, warned about the concerning reports from France — and Italy, too — about “young people getting seriously ill and very seriously ill in the ICUs.” 

She called out younger generations in particular, for not taking the virus seriously, and warned of “disproportional number of infections among that group.” 

President Trump reinforced her warning, saying: “We don’t want them gathering, and I see they do gather, including on beaches and in restaurants, young people. They don’t realize, and they’re feeling invincible.”

The CDC report looked at 4,226 covid-19 cases, with much of the data coming from the outbreaks among older adults in assisted living facilities. As in China, the highest percentage of severe outcomes were among the elderly. About 80 percent of people who died were older than 65.

However, the percentage with more moderate or severe disease requiring hospitalization is more evenly distributed between the old and the young, with 53 percent of those in ICUs and 45 percent of those hospitalized age 65 and older.

“These preliminary data also demonstrate that severe illness leading to hospitalization, including ICU admission and death, can occur in adults of any age with COVID-19,” researchers wrote.

Severe outcomes among patients with covid-19.

There was more encouraging news about children in the United States. Those age 19 and younger who were tested appear to have milder illness with almost no hospitalizations. A much larger sample of children in China, as detailed in the journal Pediatrics this week, found that most children had mild to moderate illness.

The CDC report did not specify whether the younger patients had underlying conditions that might make them more vulnerable, but Anthony S. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, commented on CNN on Wednesday night that some did.

One younger adult, Clement Chow, a genetics researcher at the University of Utah, has been tweeting about his experiences. “Important point: we really don’t know much about his virus. I’m young and not high risk, yet I am in the ICU with a very severe case,” he wrote. He said he was facing respiratory failure and put on oxygen.

Public health experts say it’s difficult to compare coronavirus numbers by age across countries at this stage because of the limited numbers tested and because differences may be related to the environment, lifestyle, demographics or something about the virus itself.

There may be a high percentages of young smokers in some areas of France, for example. Or “the high proportion of critically ill young people in the Netherlands may reflect the relatively younger population,” the Dutch news service NRC surmised.

Maybe some young people who were tested happen to be in cities or industrial areas with a lot of pollution that may affect their susceptibility to serious respiratory illness. Or the bar for admission to the hospital and the quality of treatment may vary enough by country that it affects the course of the illness.

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